Reading at Deykin JI School

Children who love to read are much more likely to succeed in all subjects and achieve academic success later in life. Following on from the early phonics work, the children progress to understand and enjoy a range of high-quality texts which have been chosen based on the National Curriculum Programme of Study. Daily reading sessions provide opportunities for encouraging and embedding reading for pleasure. Similarly, whole class texts and reading books for each year group are ambitious, thought provoking and support our pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

Whole class Reading is especially important for children with English as an additional Language (EAL). The majority of our pupils are from EAL backgrounds and have significant language barriers to overcome. Reading helps to boost children with language needs and expands their vocabulary in an impactful way. This is why we have a Reading culture throughout the school and engage with frequent story-telling, to ensure language is boosted and to foster a love for Reading.

Embedding a Love of Reading
 

To promote a love of reading at Deykin Avenue JI School, we use a wide range of stories, poems, rhymes, and non-fiction texts. We also:

• Create class book corners which inspire and motivate
• Have daily story-time sessions across the school
• Provide weekly timetabled library sessions
• Work with Birmingham Library Services
• Celebrate the ‘author of the month’, by learning about texts written by that author.
• Have WOW days to provide a hook to learning and to inspire and create enthusiasm about Reading.
• Have a list of high quality, vocabulary rich texts, that promote inclusion and diversity.
• Engage in lots of dramatisation during storytelling, including acting out stories through school plays.

Home Reading (Parent Partnership)

• Send decodable books home to match their Phonic level, to boost their confidence.
• Celebrate reading weekly with awards in our celebration assemblies and award Bronze, Silver and Gold awards for each term. This is based on quality feedback logged in home-reading logs and whether teachers can see it has made a positive impact on their reading at school.
• Deliver English and Phonics parent workshops, to embed a strong culture of working in partnership with parents.

Early Reading

All early readers study phonics daily using the Read, Write, Inc scheme. The expectation is that pupils will have successfully completed the programme by the end of the autumn term in year 2. If they do not reach this goal, additional interventions will be offered daily to accelerate their progress. This will be in the form of “precision Teaching” and continued RWI groups from years 2-4. As well as ‘Fast Track to Reading’ for years 5-6.

Boost Readers

• Children falling behind in Reading will receive targeted interventions, such as ‘precision Teaching, Word Wasp and Fast track to Reading (RWI)’. Many children will also receive language support to improve comprehension through ‘Welcomm’.
• Phonic games to address a range of learners e.g. Visual
• Half termly Phonic assessments, to regroup and move children on in their learning.
• 1:1 Reading will be provided to all children in Ks1
• Extra 1:1 Reading will take place for children with SEND and those who are the lowest 20%.
• * Phonic interventions
  * Small Group Work to develop retrieval, inference and comprehension.
• Any child that does not complete the phonics programme at the end of KS1 will continue learning phonics throughout Year 3-4 and will receive ‘Fast Track to Reading (RWI targeted intervention) in year 5-6. We use the Read Write Inc phonics scheme which allows for rapid progress, consolidation and application of skills.

Accelerated Reader
 

We have recently bought into AR for KS2; each half term, a Star Reader test allows us to measure each pupil’s progress in reading and provides us with accurate data on which library books they should be reading to provide the correct level of challenge for their unique needs.

Lexia
 

For pupils with barriers to reading, we support in the form of daily Lexia sessions. This software intuitively baselines each child and guides them through areas for development, providing lessons when difficulties arise, which are delivered by our SEND Teaching Assistant Mrs. Kerr.

Whole Class Reading

In these lessons, all the children in the class are immersed in the same high-quality literature and the discussions that these texts promote. These texts could be whole books, extracts of books or short non-fiction pieces. Teaching the whole class means that all pupils can read with the teacher more often, moving faster through more texts, or longer texts, and benefiting from the teacher’s expert explanations, modelling, questioning and feedback. It enables pupils of all abilities to access more complicated texts and content.

Reading: Year 2-6

Our Reading lessons follow the following structures:

1. Fluency Read
2. Extended Read (increase Reading experience)
3. Close Read (discuss texts in depth)

The structure of lessons across a reading week can be changed depending on the needs of a class until they become fluent readers.

Fluency Read

Fluency practice focuses on developing fluency through repeated oral reading of a short text or extract. The text needs to be long enough for children to not be able to memorise the whole thing, around 1-5 minutes of reading time. It should also be of a difficulty so that almost no child in the class can quite read the text fluently first time. Around 10% of the words in the text should be particularly for children to decode independently.

Extended Read

Extended reading involves prolonged engagement with a longer text or extract and focuses on the development of fluency, background knowledge and text knowledge through exposure to text. There are different ways to undertake reading, depending on the current reading abilities of the class. They are:

• The teacher reads to the class as they follow the text, keeping pace with a ruler. Teacher pauses, children say the next word in the text in unison. Alternatively, the teacher reads a sentence and children echo it back.
• Children, selected by the teacher, take it in turns to read a few sentences aloud while the rest to the class keep pace with a ruler. Teacher also occasionally takes a turn to model fluent reading.
• Children read silently in short bursts. As children’s ability develops, the amount of reading in each burst is increased.

Close Reading

Close reading involves the sustained, detailed analysis of a short text or extract and focuses on the development of word knowledge, background knowledge and text knowledge through deep discussion. Close reading involves repeated reading of a text whereby the first read gives an overall sense of the text, and subsequent reads involve the discussion of themes, vocabulary choices, literary devices, plot points or anything else worthy of focus. One-third of the lesson to comprise of reading and two-thirds discussion.

Impact

Through the teaching of systematic phonics and KS2 Reading, our goal is to enable children to be fluent and confident readers by the end of year 2.

Pupils will have gained the skills to apply their Phonic knowledge to decode both familiar and unfamiliar words and will have embedded knowledge of reading irregular red words, (Common exception words) outlined in the National Curriculum. They will have the confidence to access cross curricular learning, which will enhance attainment in all other subjects, including but not limited to Maths, PSHE, Science, History and Geography.

Attainment in reading is identified using termly assessments such as the end of EYFS, Key Stage 1 and 2 and following the outcomes in the Year 1 Phonics Screening check. We also use NFER assessments to measure Reading outcomes from years 2-6. These assessments will allow us to visualise the impact of our interventions on our pupil’s Reading, by showing term by term progress in Reading, throughout the year. We will also track our own reading attainment through the use of RWI half termly assessments and ongoing, day to day, teacher assessment.

Pupils will develop their fluency and comprehension as they progress throughout the school, gaining increased confidence to express their ideas, make predictions and develop inferential skills. Children will have 5 Reading lessons a week, where they will undertake, Fluency, Extended and Close Reads to increase their automaticity in Reading and develop their oracy skills through talking about stories in depth.

Overall, we want Reading to enrich our children’s lives by promoting a love of literature and share stories from around the world. This will foster enquiry about the world around them, including different cultures, Histories and genres, which will inspire them to open up their own line of inquiry about things they have read. We will celebrate Reading achievements to recognise the great contribution of excellent Readers and the positive impact it has on their peers, in terms of raising the profile of Reading throughout the school. Our ambition is for children to go on to be lifelong Readers, who continue to read with enthusiasm, the topics and genres they love and have a genuine interest in.